Big game hunters should be aware that significant boundary changes have taken place this year in Hunting District 640 near Scobey and Plentywood in FWP’s Region 6.
Unlike other districts in the area, HD 640 also continues to have a shortened buck season for both white-tailed and mule deer. Hunters there can only take either sex of either of these deer species from Oct. 26 through Nov. 16. From Nov. 17 to Nov. 30, which marks the end of the 2008 general deer and elk season, only antlerless deer of each species can be harvested in this district.
A brief history of the regulations in HD 640 helps explain why there are different rules.
HD 640 formerly was bordered by Canada on the north, Opheim and Highway 24 on the west, the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and Highway 258 on the south, and the North Dakota border on the east.
During a January 2004 meeting to set deer seasons, a petition was presented to shorten the five-week buck deer season to three weeks all across this sprawling district. Pushed by some local landowners and sportsmen, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission approved the request without asking the general public whether the change should take place.
The people who brought the petition stated that the purpose of the request was to increase the number and size of buck deer in the hunting district and to reduce pressure from road hunting, especially when the whitetail and mule deer bucks were in the rut during the last two weeks of the traditional, five-week season.
Once it was approved, the department committed to evaluating the change in buck deer regulations for two to five years in this “experimental” season.
During a meeting in early 2005 to discuss the rules for the following deer season, a petition was presented by other members of the public to change the open buck season back to five weeks. The requested changes were not made. During the next year, 2006, there were no further, formal requests to extend the season.
In October 2007, a public meeting took place to discuss the department’s biological evaluation of the three years of shortened seasons in HD 640. The meeting was informational only and was not designed to gather formal public comment.
FWP biologists found that there was an increase in overall buck ratios during this three-year period, but no increase in the mature buck ratio for mule deer. They also found that there was a decrease in overall antlerless deer harvest in HD 640, and that the shortened buck season resulted in increased hunting pressure on other surrounding deer hunting districts.
In the meantime, overall deer populations in the area have continued to increase, causing more crop-damage problems with landowners and putting more motorists at risk on the highways.
At the request of landowners and hunters who no longer wanted the shortened buck season in HD 640, a recommendation was made to the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission last year to adjust the boundaries of the district.
The proposed boundary adjustments, formally adopted by the commission in February 2008, reduced the size of HD 640 and enlarged neighboring Hunting Districts 641 and 670, where the traditional, five-week buck deer season remains.
Another reason the boundaries were changed was to give the department more flexibility in managing special deer-harvest seasons due to crop damage or severe winter weather.
Because big-game hunting regulations are now set every two years, the public will have another chance to become involved in the adjustment of deer seasons in 2009. Any regulation changes developed then would be incorporated into the 2010 hunting seasons.
Some landowners in the area, however, are not pleased with the recent boundary changes and have vowed to close their private property to public hunting this season.
While any reductions in land available for public access is regrettable, FWP recognizes that landowners have the right to allow or deny access for hunting whether their land is posted or not.
In Region 6, the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge also has hunting rules that vary from standard season and species restrictions set by the state. Hunters should be sure they are familiar with these regulations before venturing out on the CMR.
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